In cultural appreciation you do research on a culture and find positive aspects of it you like and applaud them or copy them or examine them.

In cultural appropriation you find the most pretty or interesting or tasty aspects of a culture and throw steretyped celebrations about them. In general, it’s used when the cultural copying is against the express wishes of the other culture.

For example, the tequilla party involved people dressing up in sombreros, being construction workers, maids, wearing brown faces, and shouting “Build that wall.” in reference to Donald Trump. They used Mexican stereotypes to mock and tease Mexicans in a racist way and encourage kicking them out of the country and building a wall to keep them out.

Avoid that, and your appreciation will be more valued.

If I wear proud veteran t-shirts, proud veteran hats, and have a proud veteran bumper sticker, but never served in the military what is wrong with that?

There is no easy to define line between appropriation and appreciation. People are going to disagree about where any individual act falls and why. However, I don’t believe that invalidates either concept.

Appropriation generally involves a bastardization and reduction of a distinct cultural hallmark. Tequila parties don’t particularly get my panties in a bunch, but the Mexican = Sombreros association is a reductive stereotype, calling back to a once-prominent racist characterization that we should all be familiar with as an aspect of cultural literacy.

Acts of appropriation also belittle symbols of importance for people who value their cultural heritage. War bonnets, for example, have become an object of fetishization and materialism whereas they were once hard-earned badges of honor.

>So I get that it’s not the most tactful way to engage another culture

Can you elaborate? What is it that makes this particular example so tactless, in your view?

I’m a military veteran. In my culture, certain symbols + items have specific meanings relating to honor. For example, a purple heart signifies someone who has been wounded in combat. So if some teenagers think it “looks” cool and start wearing it as a fashion statement, it would make me upset. Of course they’re free to do so by law, but that doesn’t mean it’s right. And if these kids don’t even know what people go through to earn purple hearts, then that’s cultural appropriation.

So I think cultural appropriation is a valid concept but I take a more restrictive approach of requiring non-understanding. So if someone doesn’t even know what a purple heart means & wears it purely for aesthetics, that’s cultural appropriation.

>How do we know that it was appropriate as opposed to homage or inspiration?

What is the distinction to you? Elvis was free to be inspired by the work of black musicians and play music to pay homage to them, but that’s doesn’t really help them does it?

> In this case, it’s white people basically just engaging with other cultures. The example that comes to mind was the tequila party at Bowdoin College

What part of drinking tequila and wearing sombreros makes you label this as “engaging in other cultures”? What was being learned? Was there any mexican representation at the party, or was it just a bunch of white kids saying “Lol let’s party like Mexicans”. Read the statement by the Bowdoin College Student Government:

>adheres to the definition of cultural appropriation as the manifestation of racism where there exists a power dynamic in which members of a dominant culture take elements from a culture of people who have been systemically oppressed by that dominant group, **perpetuate racist stereotypes, and/or misrepresent a peoples culture**.

People at a tequila party aren’t really learning anything about Mexico or trying anything new, they’re just regurgitating a stereotype.

>when white people go to Mexico and order street tacos in Spanish it’s considered authentic and sophisticated. Why is one appropriation and the other appreciation?

By whom? Regardless, you can’t tell the difference between wearing a sombrero and drinking tequila because you think that’s how mexicans are and travelling to a country, using its language, and engaging with local people?

After reading your post, it sounds like you are saying “My words make me sound racist, but trust me, I’m not. None of my friends think so”. That leads me to believe that either there is a big gap between what you mean and what you are saying (a charitable account) or that your friends do actually view you was more racially discriminatory/offensive than they let on (a more frank account). Personally, my money is on the second. It seems more likely that your friends – who may otherwise care about you – are reluctant to say that you are offending them than it is to say the the racist/bigoted ideas you’re presenting are not an accurate reflection of who you are.

I wrote a response on a similar thread, which I think is relevant here.

There is a difference between cultural exchange and cultural appropriation; one which can been very clearly observed at extreme ends of the spectrum.

The “appropriation” part. I see “cultural transfer” as a natural process that happens when cultures mix; essentially a two-way street for the flow of cultural information. A newly-wed interracial couple can practice cultural exchange by having extended family come over for thanksgiving dinner and cook for each other, for example. On the other end of the spectrum, Blackface is a particularly egregious form of cultural appropriation: it takes physical characteristics from African/African American people and uses these to both produce wealth and comedic value while also shamelessly reducing these people to simple caricatures. The line between exchange and appropriation becomes more blurred as you get closer to the center, unfortunately. Thankfully, though, I believe that there are some fundamental characteristics that separate cultural exchange from cultural appropriation.

1) *Cultural exchange most often happens through a two-way flow of cultural information, and is improved when the power differential between cultures is as close to zero as possible.* This is, in my opinion, fundamental component of cultural exchange. When the power differential between cultural is negligible, neither culture can “take” from another. In the context of our interracial family gathering, no one family culture is presumably more dominant than the other. Thus, recipes/religion/etc. can be shared or withheld without conflict. One consequence of a low power differential is neither culture can force the other to share. That is to say that each culture *must* respect the boundaries of the other (since they can’t force their way through these boundaries).

2) *Cultural appropriation most often happens through more unidirectional flow of cultural information, and is improved when the power differential between cultures is greater than zero.* In cultural appropriation, stronger cultures take cultural icons, symbols, and words irrespective of the desires of weaker cultures. Some power differentials can be socially imposed (I.e. “White people are better than black people”), financially imposed (I.e “Americans are more wealthy than Venezuelans”), or any intersection of socially relevant constraints. Generally, we see cultural appropriation in the context of race. White Americans have criticized AAVE as improper speech (It is, in fact, a linguistically recognized dialect), afros, dreadlocks, and curly hair as unprofessional, while also taking the “alluring” aspects of African American cultural and attributing their success to themselves (The recent focus on White women like Kylie Jenner bringing big butts and full lips “into style). African American culture is widely recognized to be less powerful than White American culture (evidenced by people in positions of power and influence, purchasing power, intergenerational wealth, etc.), and thus cannot impose many meaningful boundaries on their culture.

It is important to note that these are not hard and fast rules. The respect that many Americans have for the armed forces is an example of two groups with large power differentials existing with respect of cultural boundaries. It is very rare to see Americans walking around in military fatigues or saluting officers due to the understanding and respect for the cultural military service comes with. On the other hand, the restriction of the word “Nigger/Nigga” and any related sounding words (Niggerish, which means tightfisted), is an example of a weaker cultural force forcing a cultural boundary to be upheld.